Court Overturns Conviction of Man in 2013 Killing

An appeals court has overturned the conviction of the man convicted of killing a young Huntington Station woman in 2013.

The court rejected the indictment  of Fernanofdo Romualdo, 32, of Huntington Station. He had been serving a term of 25 years to life in prison for second-degree murder in the strangulation death of 23-year-old Sarah Strobel, 23. He was sentenced in 2017.

On Oct. 3, 2013, Suffolk County Police Homicide Det. Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick said a passerby in the preserve found her body about 300 feet into the woods at the Froehlich Farms Nature Preserve. Friends gathered in an impromptu service for her a few days later.

He was arrested in 2015 after DNA taken from her body matched his DNA kept in court records. Romualdo was in prison at the time on a conviction of second-degree rape of a juvenile.

But the appeals court ruled that though the DNA matched, the trial had failed to establish when it was left or prove that Romualdo had ever been in the woods. Romulado denied remembering whether he had had sex with her or when. Heis expected to be released soon from state prison.

Strobel’s killing was the first of four unrelated slayings in Huntington Station in 2013-1014, traumatizing the community, which had long felt neglected,and led to demands for more police and other services.

 

 

 

 

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